‘007 never had any respect for government property,’ said Q after Bond casually tossed his trilby to Moneypenny at his wedding in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This hat belonged to Bond’s employer, the British government, and Q’s statement implies that the rest of his wedding attire could also be government property and not Bond’s own. Do all of Bond’s clothes belong to the government?
The question of how Bond affords his clothes is occasionally raised, and if Bond purchases his own wardrobe, he can certainly afford to do so because his income is not limited to his job pay. However, when Bond is on the job, his needs are covered at the government’s expense. Bond likely charges his wardrobe expenditures to the government. He may send all his clothing bills to the government, or he may ask the government for reimbursement, either at the time of purchase or after he returns from a mission where he used the clothes in question. If clothes Bond purchased himself are lost or damaged on a mission, it would be appropriate for the government to reimburse Bond for the expense of replacing them. In any case, Bond is probably going to ensure the government pays for his professional and personal clothes, even if he has to be creative about it.
In the film The Living Daylights, Bond purchases a more extravagant hamper from Harrods than he was supposed to pick up, and he likely pushes the boundaries in the same way when it comes to purchasing his clothes. He’s probably making wardrobe upgrades that his superiors don’t approve of but still have to pay for. Whether the government procures Bond’s clothes or Bond buys the clothes and sends the bill to the government, the clothes would be government property. Bond usually did his own shopping for his missions in the Fleming stories, but in Live and Let Die, the FBI sends a tailor and a haberdasher to Bond to outfit him as an American. Bond’s usual tailored clothes would need to be purchased in advance for Bond’s missions, with a wardrobe for a wide range of climates and occasions, while sportswear in the books was purchased right before a mission.
If Bond’s clothes are government property, that could mean he keeps some or most of them at the office. Bond must have a full wardrobe at the office, probably with more clothes than he has at home. In Octopussy and A View to a Kill, Bond has little time to get dressed for his assignments. In Octopussy, he has 55 minutes to catch a plane to India after leaving M’s office, and he brings a suitcase full of clothes that are appropriate for India. There might be a team packing Bond’s suitcase from a wardrobe at the office, as Bond wouldn’t have enough time to pack his own clothes, let alone fetch clothes from home. He likely has some clothes packed already, but he couldn’t possibly have different suitcases packed for every conceivable destination. He arrives in India wearing different clothes than he left with, which either means he had to changed before he left or he changed en route. In A View to a Kill, M gives Bond exactly 35 minutes to get ‘properly dressed’ for Royal Ascot, so his morning dress must also be at the office.
Bond’s personal office may have a large walk-in wardrobe, or there’s an area at MI6 that houses clothing for all the agents, possibly with a strict inventory. Bond probably wears a combination of his own clothes along with a few items that MI6 might keep in stock. MI6 is also likely able to send Bond’s clothes to him when his missions take him to unexpected places. He’s not picking up tailored suits on the go.
Q-Branch provides Bond with special clothes, like a belt that shoots a piton in GoldenEye and a ski parka in The World Is Not Enough, confirming that Bond has some clothes supplied to him. His shoes in Goldfinger were equipped to fit a Q-Branch homing device in the sliding heel. Bond’s special cummerbunds in Diamonds Are Forever and Licence to Kill are likely products of Q-Branch. His tactical shawl-collar dinner jacket in The Living Daylights may have been modified by Q-Branch. Q-Branch mends Bond’s dinner jacket in Octopussy, showing that they possess advanced mending capabilities, and possibly much more.
Knowing how Bond likes to break the rules, he would certainly wear government property off the job. He would be expected to keep some work clothes at home, in addition to his personal wardrobe, but there is likely little or no difference between what Bond’s professional and personal wardrobes. On most occasions, Bond has the same sense of style on the job that he has off the job. He usually wears clothes from the same makers and in the same styles whether he’s on duty or off duty, with some exceptions in the Daniel Craig era. We see that Bond keeps clothes at home, where he prepares for his missions in Dr. No and Live and Let Die. In the latter, we see Bond’s coat cupboard near his front door, which contains the navy double-breasted Chesterfield coat that he brings to New York in the following scene.
Excellent post, Matt, with interesting reflexions. The same logic goes for the watch. Whenever Bond needs a new watch for a mission, he prefers a Rolex because of its robustness, and has to motivate the expense with arguments like the watch being waterproof and can be used as a knuckle duster.
Indeed. In the OHMSS novel, the new Rolex he gets to replace the one used as a knuckleduster is one he had to “blarney out” of Q branch as it was Christmas and shops were closed. Which means that Q branch had a stock of Rolexes as “any good watchmaker down the street”.
It probably helped that, at the time Fleming wrote the Bond novels, Rolexes weren’t quite the status symbols they are now. They were still considered practical, durable premium watches – Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay both wore them while climbing Everest.
>Whenever Bond needs a new watch for a mission, he prefers a Rolex
Well no he wears cheap watches on expandable bracelets for most of the book series.
>he prefers a Rolex because of its robustness,
His Rolex wearing comes at the tail end of the series, largely because of the waterproofness. He uses it as a knuckleduster while escaping Piz Gloria, but that’s not why he gets it.
As Greg says, Rolex was not a luxury maker at the time. High quality and robust, which is what people bought them for, but also available at army commissaries and affordable enough for a GI in Vietnam to pick up.
Hillary did not wear one, though. He wore a Smiths (British watches hadn’t yet died out); Norgay wore the Rolex.
I’m in the process of a reread of the whole series. In Live and Let Die, the second novel, it specifically mentions Bond consulting his Rolex while selecting the fuse for a limpet mine. So he certainly used them early on.
As to the specific model, I am not sure. The novel was published in 1954, that is the year of the commercial debut of the Explorer and Submariner. Those had been in production since 1953. It’s cutting very close, but if we are to assume MI6 got a hold of prerelease models and issued them to its agents, then that favors the government property position (as does the stock mentioned in OHMSS). Of course, it could just be a regular OP that Bond personally owned.
An interesting notion. I think a possible solution to this problem in the new video game, 007 First Light.
In the game, there is a sub-section of Q Branch called “Wearables” which provides agents with clothing for their specific missions. For a mission to a luxury resort to Vietnam, they do provide Bond with some clothing appropriate for a fancy playboy. So, in the game version at least, Bonds clothing is government property.
Thanks for sharing this! I haven’t played the game.
I think the problem here is a lack of the script writers will (or knowledge) to include how the mundane aspects of real life are handled (packing clothes, etc, which happens a lot in films). It just seems to”happen”, with no logic, and I think you just have accept it’s a film, with no reasonable explanation. I think it’s fanciful to think that there would be rooms full of fitted clothes, to cover all occasions, just ready to go at a moments notice. My own experience of working for the Government in the UK, when you need to provide your own clothes, is a “clothing allowance”, added on to your salary.
Good post and fully agreed. I’m assuming that Matt has approached this post as Connery did his role “through the comedy door” – at least in part.
We can probably agree that certain items of equipment, gadgetry and in some cases necessary clothing for missions (disguises) may have been provided or financed by HM Government (eg the CR Tuxedo) but its doubtful that this would extend to everyday clothes for travel and office.
But I agree with your premise that a lot of this speculation is down to the largely unnecessary leaps in logic that we’ve unfortunately had to come to terms with throughout the canon. Many viewers are happy to overlook these oversights and I agree that we don’t need to see 007 doing his ablutions etc. but a few seconds of exposition would add some realism to explain how certain outfits just magically appear.
i would love to see the scene in Spectre where, Bond has to go shopping with Madeline for the rest of the movie. They go from Austria in the snow, to Tangiers, to somewhere in the Sahara…
I guess the explanation is just that Bond’s world has always been a more stylish, glamorous, and exciting version of our own. In a world where a Lotus Esprit can turn into a submarine, MI6 having a vast wardrobe, full of perfectly tailored clothes for every occasion, available to their all agents, wherever they are in the world, isn’t too much of a leap.
I’ve always assumed Bond had a generous expense account (nevertheless exceeded) for his cover as a globetrotting executive with Universal Exports. I’ve also assumed Sir Roger was mistaken… Bond wasn’t the world’s best- known *spy* but rather recognized around the world as a sort of a lesser Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos, so to speak, returning to a favorite hotel, restaurant, tailor, etc.
(With media nowadays the cover names such as St. John Smythe or Mr. Fisher don’t really make sense as his face would be known. )
This still doesn’t settle how he packs quickly, but I’ve also imagined if he ends up in Hong Kong, for example, he tells his local tailor he had an unexpected business matter and only has his London clothes, or some such. (Which doesn’t solve “instant bespoke,” of course, unless he pays a retainer to have clothes on hand around the world… I suppose I can headcanon anything, but it does get ridiculous…)
There is a double meaning and a reference to Dr No in Q’s remark.
Moneypenny can also be considered as the “Governement property” not being respected.
In Dr No, Bond jokes that he does not take Moneypenny to dinner or whatever else because M would have him “court-martialed for illegal use of government property”.
This is exactly how I understood this, too, from the first time on I have seen it; as a reference to Moneypenny, and not to the hat.
I don’t think the government would be paying for his clothing except for specific clothing required for a mission. (In the 50s it was still pretty normal for a middle-class Englishman, let alone one with an aristocrat’s inheritance money, to go to a bespoke tailor.)
The mission/assignment clothing thing still happens today. For instance, the British ambassador to the Vatican just went to Savile Row to have her ceremonial uniform for that role made. HM Government would be paying for such things.
> In Octopussy, he has 55 minutes to catch a plane to India after leaving M’s office, and he brings a suitcase full of clothes that are appropriate for India.
Having just watched the film, I believe in this case he packed and booked the flight before going to M
It’s possible, but we don’t know how much time had passed. He clearly didn’t have much time in any case.
Q’s comment along with Bond’s quip to Moneypenny in Dr No always struck me as jokes. But this is actually a very interesting topic.
Focusing on cinematic Bond, I had always assumed the non mission specific clothes were just his, that he enjoyed fine dressing, and his income (from MI6 or elsewhere) allowed him to indulge. It appears that on a mission he has unlimited funds and he can use those for anything – in TLD he calls Universal Exports and orders two opera tickets no questions asked and it is implied he buys a dress for Kara the same way. To me this just made sense, MI6 has authorized this man to kill people at his discretion, surely they trust his judgment on how to use an expense account.
Bond’s quip was definitely a joke, but Q never jokes about his work!
Very true!
If his clothes are indeed government property, I wonder if M or Q are annoyed that Bond never seems to wear the same outfit twice…
I guess it’s part of the glamour of cinema, but I enjoyed Connery’s wardrobe who reused basically the same outfits -with a subtle variation- numerous times. The tweed jacket, navy blazers and flannels, and dark grey flannel and mid grey glen check suits seemed to be his favorites. Brosnan had his navy birdseye suit. With the other actors its not really the same. I guess Moore had his brown suits and navy blazers, even though the style varied a lot. Craig’s reused items are mostly casual like navy polos, rollnecks, and blousons.
Working in public service myself, I always wondered how many hours Bond might spend with his travel expense report after each mission, noting down every receipt he collected.
Surely he will do it just as I do: What you do not get reimbursed for now, you can always put into your income tax declaration later.